


Crashlanding

by asterCrash



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterCrash/pseuds/asterCrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Pharah to all points, my suit is compromised, losing altitude—”</p>
<p>Your HUD cuts out and you lose comms. As the lights inside your helmet dim, the fog of your visor clears away and you can see unobstructed through the tinted glass. It’s been so long since you’ve been out flying without your display clogging up the view and the city below looks beautiful beyond compare. Of course you’re not flying now, you’re falling and falling fast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crashlanding

_Lijiang Tower 2100hrs_

“Pharah to all points, my suit is compromised, losing altitude—”

Your HUD cuts out and you lose comms. As the lights inside your helmet dim, the fog of your visor clears away and you can see unobstructed through the tinted glass. It’s been so long since you’ve been out flying without your display clogging up the view and the city below looks beautiful beyond compare. Of course you’re not flying now, you’re falling and falling fast.

Time slows to a crawl, though you waste some of it imagining whether this is how Lena sees the world. Your eyes dart instinctively to your altimeter, where your old suit would have a manual display, steadily ticking away the metres until sea level, but this suit was entirely digital and as such all you see is a clear section of glass, tiny lines rivulets of LED circuitry barely visible. In the absence of warning lights and alarms you go by what you can feel. Eyeballing the distance and your growing speed, you estimate less than ten seconds to impact.

The original Raptora suits were designed knowing that the technology was devastatingly new, and anyone wearing one made piece with the fact that if something went wrong they would be a fireball before any safety systems could save them. Still, Helix had cared about their people, and the suits had been designed to eject all components and deploy a parachute the second there was a hint of trouble. When they designed the Mark VI many of the old safety features were not included, though ejection procedures were a mandatory requirement and you made sure your people were drilled in getting out of their gear as quickly as possible. Then the call came for Overwatch and you panicked. You were familiar with the suit, with its limitations, and you wanted so very much to be out on the frontlines, _helping people_. You made some modifications. This suit won’t come off unless you pull it apart yourself.

Your gun goes first, overheated and powerless to help you, you pull the workaround ripcord to decouple it from your bandoleer and throw it off to the side to freefall its own way to the city. Unless fired, all the munitions contained within are inert, but you pity anyone who parked their car outdoors today.

Next, you dig both hands under the collarbone of your breast plate and heave. You feel the screws begin to give way in a second, but it costs you a precious second further to rip the plating off completely. Protected underneath the plating you find the manual release clasps for your engines. You feel three starting to heat up under your left shoulder blade, it must have been there that you were shot, where your fuel cells ruptured and your circuitry fried. You become aware that the city is rising up to meet you a lot faster than it was before. You fumble with the clasp for engine one, they have to be removed in sequence. Your fingers ache but you manage to pull the clasp free and engine one jettisons itself off to the side of you. You move on to engine number two, even though three is starting to burn like the noon sun in summer. You fight the rush of memories, your life trying to flash before your eyes, the city below is getting very close now. Engine two disengages and you move on to engine three. You feel the flesh of your back searing under it, try not to imagine the sickening smell of cooked pork. If there’s one thing you hate about barracks life it's how often the europeans insist on cooking pork. You’d think you weren’t the only one who’d had to smell a burning human before. Your fingers slip on the clasp, and you try to grab again but your grip slides. Your hand has blood on it, your blood or someone else’s there’s no time to tell. You get your fingers hooked under the clasp and whisper a prayer of thanks as engine three flies away and cool air rushes past the burns on your back. Engine four you leave where it is, you don’t trust your grip on the clasp and your fingers ache enough.

Even with three engines gone, you gave up the parachute when you joined Overwatch, reasoning that there would never be a situation where you would have the option of jettisoning your equipment, that if you were going to die in combat it would probably be in a fireball or to a sniper's bullet. The problem solver in you runs through your options. Your artificial legs can sustain a lot, but you’ve fallen hundreds of metres already, they can’t absorb that impact for you. Even if you could manually start engine four, it’s not enough on its own to slow you down to a safe velocity.

You’re beginning to prepare for the inevitable when your eyes catch a flash of yellow from above. You know you only have a few seconds left as you spin yourself around to face back to the sky. Angela is there, hand outstretched, wings flaring as she tries to keep up with your descent. You reach for her and without hesitation she grabs your hand (for once). You can see the wings of her suit rotate themselves as she tries to slow the both of you down, her arm visibly straining as she tries to hold up the entire weight of you and your remaining armor. Her face contorts with pain and there’s nothing you can do to make it easier on her. She can’t even see your face with your visor in the way, only the curve of your mouth. You feel your hand start to slip, still slick with blood that you are starting to think must be your own. Knowing you can’t do much more for her, you smile. Your hand slips an inch further. She looks like she’s about to cry. You’ve lost a lot of your speed but you’re down to your last ten metres before ground level. Your hands slip apart as she screams your name, and you watch her disappear above you as the ground pulls you down.

Metal crunches under you and a car alarm goes off. You stop feeling as your brain floods with endorphins, cutting off pain, cutting off sensation. The last thing you see as you lose consciousness is a valkyrie descending to claim the spirit of a worthy warrior.

* * *

 

A voice shouts out with all the fury of a heavenly host.

“Heroes never die.”

* * *

 

You see her over you, in the moments that you’re conscious, your fretful angel pouring over you with worried expressions, heavy bags under her eyes, tear tracks still smudging her usually perfect eyeliner.  
Sometimes you dream, sometimes you’re awake for a few seconds, it becomes hard to tell the difference.

You see Strike Commander Morrison at your bedside, without his mask. Handsome Jack, your mother used to call him. He was your hero when you were a girl, he was a hero to every little boy and girl on the planet. He’s got scars down his face now, angry red lines, and his mouth curls into a cruel snarl where fire took most of his lips. “Hang in there, soldier,” he growls at you. He’s still handsome.

You think you dream Winston, because he seems so big, like when you were a child. He used to carry you around on his shoulder when you were small, tell you that you were just as much a monkey as he was, which was to say that neither of you were monkeys, even if one of you had certainly done more to earn that title when she ate all the cookies in the lab.

Jesse holds your hand, and in the seconds you can see him you think you see tears in his eyes.

You dream that your mother came to see you, but she never had white hair when she was alive. 

* * *

 

The first time that you really feel yourself wake up after the crash, Angela is curled up in the corner next to your bed. You tilt your head to see her as much as your neck can comfortably allow, though your stomach rolls with the movement. Morning sunshine is falling in through the window, lighting on her blond hair like a halo. Her eyes are closed, she looks peaceful in her exhaustion. You always told her she looked cute in her hospital scrubs.

Your voice croaks as you try to speak, but it’s enough to make her open her eyes. She’s on her feet in a second, checking monitors, making sure everything is stable, you don’t miss the way her hand slips into yours. As she taps at screens and adjusts your fluids, you try to think up a cheesy one liner, she cuts you off with a kiss before you can open your mouth for anything else.

And as she strokes you hair and tells you all that you missed while you were under, you decide that there’s nothing you need to say that she doesn’t already know.

**Author's Note:**

> Was thinking of perhaps doing a series of these, lots of the Overwatch characters have equipment that could easily be their death and I kind of want to write fics where they have to face those situations.
> 
> Other ideas for such a series:  
> D.Va stranded in a firefight after her Mech detonated with her stuck inside.  
> Mercy gets injured badly in a rescue operation and can no longer survive outside of the Valkyrie suit.  
> Tracer dealing with a cracked chronal accelerator, knowing that she could potentially be lost for good if it breaks completely.
> 
> Any ideas or feedback, leave me a comment


End file.
